#gritstuck

Ivy Valley was, of course, closed the next morning; I was, properly speaking, supposed to go to the next school over, but my parents asked me some pointed questions about whether I'd thought about participating (no) or participated (hell no) or whether I understood what kind of impact this could have on school admissions (Mom Dad I have an alibi called "I'm so sick I can't move", you /think/ I'd be seen out there? If you want to corroborate it take me to the doctor's office and have them write a note). Finally they stopped asking questions and left me alone in my room to stare listlessly at cable news, my mother only opening the door to drop off bottles of half-strength knockoff sports drinks and the kitchen egg timer to drink them on.

I didn't dare call anyone; I had nobody to call. I couldn't very well consult the Network, as that was likely being monitored (people can be induced to share a lot of things, like their passwords, without even leaving a mark - I read about the methods in "The Gulag Archipelago" and human beings don't change shape that quickly).

The news had on riot police, and a shot of Samantha screaming and shattering security cameras and two-way mirrors with a stick before being overcome, and -

No, wait. There were a couple of them dressed in full gear sitting down, linking arms with some of my classmates sitting in front of the school - Jessica and Sarah and Ryan and the rest of them had been there since 8AM last morning, but none of them were asleep, they were too hopped up on solidarity and stress hormones to care. I muted the TV so as not to have to listen to the commentary. It would probably be something about dereliction of duty.

Myra saw me before I saw her, but it was pretty close, all things considered.

I saw her casually swiping the plate of aged cheese from an art exhibition with catering, or slipping into the back stairwell of the library (the one that led to the roof if you slipped a thin enough pocketknife into the doorjamb and worked up and down a little), or looking down from the top branches of a tree. Just outside notice. Or most people's notice, anyway. She was small and slight and - not so much invisible, as too normal to remark upon, if you saw her in any one of those situations. And anyway, she was too good at hiding to have come from an intact normal family. I wondered who she was.

It was late April, though, that she decided to just give up the pretense and sit on the steps to the student center, with a wrong sandwich from the school's Subway franchise's trash.

Myra waved to me. I made a beeline towards her.

"So. You've been watching me."

"I have." She agreed, cordially.

"Are you going to ask me out? You've been eyeing me since Easter, at least."

Dear Past Me,

What I say now is going to be difficult to believe. But I have to be quick about it.

Find the other five who were born children of meteors. Get them copies of the Game, Sburb, by any means necessary, legal or otherwise. The existence of our future depends upon it.

The Warworn Vagabond stumped into the half-buried shipping container with a crutch under one arm, having decided that it was sufficiently stable as to provide a good shelter for the day.

He'd spent the last week working his way up the coast, only having turned inland early that evening when he knew he was approaching his destination. Skaianet GPS satellites still blinked quietly above, and the key in his pocket urged him on in the direction he needed to go.

He'd had a blade driven clean through his leg in the last confrontation. The medics had done as much as they could for him, but the leg was gimpy, and he was still missing fingers on his arm from the attempted assassination previous. But the Whiteblacks had bought enough time for the Heroes to finish the duty of breeding and placing the Frog, and their message had reached farther and wider than he'd ever thought possible - thanks to the Hero of Mind and her sharp eyes for revolution in the making.

She asked, and was allowed to stay, as the Hero of Time sat down at the ectobiology equipment for himself and created the Heroes, or players as it were, from paradox slime. She peered down at the tiny brown child he'd placed carefully in the crick of her arm, and the "baby" had grabbed for her uniform's top button, and she'd let him have it. It was nothing much, she assured the older version of him. Merely the class symbol of a Pawn, the emblem of the Whiteblack's squadrons. Which he wore on his shirt, she pointed out.

He stared at her, mumbled something about chess, or about caste systems, or about paradoxes. "Come again?" she said, remembering one of the phrases the Heroes used amongst themselves.

"Nothing," he said.

And then he told her about a kind of dream his species had, where they all knew that, if any of them really wanted to make a difference, they just had to work hard and take opportunities as they were given. She wondered if this was the kind of dream they had in their sleep. He said no, it was a kind of dream he said was "American", and he found out too late that the people who had told him it existed were lying to him. They'd fall to their planet as children, grow up "too quickly", and eventually end up in this Incipisphere because they played a game, instead. He said he'd wanted to be a philosopher.

She had the light carapace of a Prospitian, though she'd joined the army of the Whiteblack Vanguard, so she was a Whiteblack, just like the rest of them. White was better here, it meant her carapace did not heat up so much under the planet's sun, so she needed to wear less to prevent blistering. Though it also meant her carapace was thinner, so she ran more of a risk of getting injured. Thus the rubber on her feet, after she had a festering cut from a shard of glass that kept her from traveling for two weeks.

The Whiteblack Vanguard had explained to them about how carapaces were grown. A thin black skin to keep the internal organs together; then a thick layer of white carapace, and a thinner layer of black carapace upon that if the pawn or bishop or knight was destined for Derse, rather than Prospit. Their internal organs were the same, the Hero who advised him had concluded.

The hero of Mind had also said something about epigenetics afterwards, too, but the Silent Mnemonist didn't really know how that worked. Back then, as a Surefooted Messenger, what she cared about and understood was that it only took a few chemicals' difference to turn the slime that would become a Prospitian into a Dersian, or vice versa. Chemicals that were kept in bottles in the Veil, to be dropped pre-mixed into the cloning tubes. The heroes set something up, that there were two identical pawns, in two identical tubes, facing - and one chemical in one, and the other in the other.

The Silent Mnemonicist wandered, all too aware of the weight of the pieces of rubber tied to her feet to protect them as she picked her way through fields of bones and shards of glass and open cans.

The sun almost had a palpable beat (although that may have been the blood rushing in her ears), its rays bearing down upon the surface of the planet with a scouring, bleaching intensity, like the winds it inspired. Full of sand, and glass. Although, she recalled, glass was just the amorphous form of sand, melted, twirled together with small quantities of something else to keep the silicon dioxide molecules supple and disrupt crystal formation. So it was either all glass, or all sand. She decided to call it sand.

Words kept the Silent Mnemonist's mind straight. Nights spent with a campfire made of wood (driftwood, she thought, or shipping pallets), and maybe tinned meat (spam or tuna or chicken; she liked the spam best, it reminded her of vatmeat, a treat for the Calendrical Reset) or a can of vegetables to keep her company.